Time and playing together have made Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra a pretty potent band. Security drops into solid, varied grooves at a number of tempos, staying true to its Afrobeat model without seeming trapped by it. Quibbles with the album are really quibbles with the form, which favors extended grooves with mid-career James Brown’s sense of song structure—i.e. riffs punctuated by catch phrases. Most of the tracks on Security stretch out, and when the vocals start a minute-and-a-half into “War Hero,” it sounds like singer Amayo jumped in on the first note by comparison to the rest of the album. More often, they take their time establishing the percussion-heavy groove before anyone sings, so much so that it’s easy to imagine less patient listeners zoning out before the words ever start. That, though, is a tradition of the form, and while it’s good to hear anti-war lyrics, they serve more to reinforce a listener’s sense of rightness than to win converts. What’s most exciting about Security is how varied the rhythms are, so the tracks may be long, but the album doesn’t feel like one long track. The genre’s not a jail, and there are definite, clear differences from song to song, so even though the album can drift to the background as albums with long songs can when listened to at home, it doesn’t stay there. Security also promises a pretty dynamic live show, which, like New Orleans funk, is where this music really lives.